Helping shoppers move on from plastic
In the three weeks since The Filling Station Eco Store opened its door on Abbeygate Street in Galway City, this shop’s mission to rid our cupboards of single-use plastics has caught the imagination of people far and wide.
Opened by John Tedders, a farmer from Shrule, and his children Keeva, Jonathan and Jess, The Filling Station is no ordinary shop. The outside of this small unit that once housed an XL convenience store has been transformed with bright colours and, through the window, you see an image of a grocer’s store that might look at home in 1960s Ireland.
But the thought process behind this shop is very much of today’s world, where the wasteful use of plastic is dominating our collective consciousness – and images of floating islands of the stuff in our oceans etch on our minds the impact it’s having.
While it’s nigh on impossible to avoid plastic in supermarket aisles, John has made it easy. He buys everything in bulk – from organic and local suppliers where possible – and customers bring in their own reusable containers to fill up.
Your container is weighed while empty, before you fill it to your heart’s content. Then it’s weighed again and you only pay for its contents – with everything priced per kilo or per millilitre. Unsurprisingly, that means savings for customers, something we’ll come back to later.
Setting up a shop like this had been a long-term ambition for John and one he finally realised this year when the unit, on the corner of Abbeygate Street and Market Street, came up for lease.
For full story see this week's Connacht Tribune.